11.14.03
4 p.m. CST Friday, Nov. 14, 2003
Expedition 8 CrewSTATUS REPORT: ISS03-59
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORT #03-59
The Expedition 8 crew of the International Space Station wound up its
week with a busy Friday, getting ready for next week's practice
session for a possible February spacewalk. Commander and NASA ISS
Science Officer Michael Foale and Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri
also spent considerable time on science experiments.
Crewmembers are scheduled to do fit check work with the Russian
spacesuits on Monday. On Tuesday they are to practice various
spacewalk procedures, including boarding the ISS Soyuz 7 at the
station in pressurized spacesuits. That would become necessary if
they were unable to repressurize the Pirs Docking Compartment after a
spacewalk.
Today Foale spend almost two hours working with the Cellular
Biotechnology Operations Support System (CBOSS) and its Fluid
Dynamics Investigation (FDI) experiment. He was preparing for
operations with the experiment, which focuses on growth of
three-dimensional cell cultures. Meanwhile Kaleri worked with the
Russian Profilaktika experiment, which looks at some long-duration
spaceflight effects and how to combat them.
After a relatively quiet weekend, the crew began the week with body
mass measurements moments after they were awakened. Crewmembers also
stowed the EarthKAM experiment, which last week completed 750
requested Earth pictures for students in 41 middle schools. Foale and
Kaleri also took time to talk with former Skylab astronauts gathered
at the Marshall Space Flight Center on the 30th anniversary of the
launch of the last crew to the first U.S. space station.
On Tuesday crewmembers did a periodic hearing assessment, inspected
the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) and checked out
batteries for the Station's defibrillator. Wednesday they worked to
organize equipment and supplies and stowed much of the material in
the Zero-G Stowage Rack in the U.S. laboratory Destiny. One object of
the activity, which will continue next week, is to assure that fire
ports in the Station's Unity Node are unobstructed in the unlikely
event fire should break out behind the panels through which the ports
provide access for fire extinguishers.
Foale responded to flight controllers' questions about the TVIS and
inspected the device before exercising on the treadmill Thursday. He
also replaced a battery in the Space Acceleration Measurement System.
The crew changed out 10 smoke detectors.
Foale and Kaleri also continued taking potassium citrate pills or
placebos and recorded their food, water and medication intake as part
of the Renal (kidney) Stone Risk During Spaceflight experiment.
Previous experiments in space have shown an increased risk ifor
development of kidney stones during and immediately after flight, and
the experiment is testing a proven Earth-based remedy in space.
Information on the crew's activities aboard the Space Station, and
instructions on how to view the Space Station from anywhere on Earth,
is available at:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov
Details on Space Station science operations can be found on an
Internet site administered by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., at
http://scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/
The next International Space Station status report will be issued
Friday, Nov. 21, or sooner if events warrant.
-end-